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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 71

Chapter XX. — Ground Rent must all be Taken for Public Purposes

Chapter XX.

Ground Rent must all be Taken for Public Purposes.

It is not always made quite clear in Single Tax controversies that the whole ground-rent fund is demanded as public revenue. Henry George, however, is quite decided upon the point. He is not satisfied to make a levy upon ground rent, which shall be sufficient merely to cover existing taxes and rates, because if there was any balance this would still leave to landownership a power of taking it from industry and using it as private income. The demand is therefore made unmistakably for the whole ground rent to be delivered up for public-purposes. However gradually it may be accomplished, it must be clearly understood that nothing short of its entire ultimate surrender can satisfy the demands of justice according to the views of Single Taxers. Nothing short of this would accomplish the two great results aimed at, viz.: (1) the restoration of the ground rent, or using value of land, to the community which causes it to acquire the value; and (2) the killing of the selling value of land, so that the intending user can step into it upon the level, and have no monopolists' wall to climb over before he can reach it. The next heading will show whether this would be attained.